In this post, we are going to cover in detail many of the causes of societal poverty.
Outside the obvious reasons, there are still other factors or reasons why society is swimming in poverty.
This is why you are advised to sit back, get a cup of coffee and let’s go through this long journey
Because of the long length of this post, we are going to discuss the causes of poverty under five (5) major levels. They include; Governmental, individual, parental, environmental, and peer group levels.
You are still welcome to check out the below table of contents for a quick view.
Table of Contents
- What is poverty?
- What is Societal poverty
- Levels/causes of societal poverty
- Wrapping things up on the causes of societal poverty
What is poverty?
According to Brunswick Canada, Poverty is about not having enough money to meet basic needs including food, clothing and shelter.
They went further to add that poverty is more, much more than just not having enough money.
Brunswick went further to add the World Bank Organization’s description of what poverty is all about.
“Poverty is hunger. Poverty is a lack of shelter. Poverty is being sick and not being able to see a doctor.
Poverty is not having access to school and not knowing how to read. Poverty is not having a job, it is fear of the future, living one day at a time.
Poverty has many faces, changing from place to place and across time, and has been described in many ways.
Most often, poverty is a situation people want to escape. So poverty is a call to action — for the poor and the wealthy alike — a call to change the world so that many more may have enough to eat, adequate shelter, access to education and health, protection from violence, and a voice in what happens in their communities.”
Poverty according to my father is “man’s inability to man up to responsibilities”.
At some point, I began to wonder what my father meant by this definition until one fateful day when one of my neighbours had a serious fight with his wife simply because he couldn’t provide $20 to settle a problem that plagued the family.
I also know of a man who lost his daughter because he didn’t have $50 to buy her drugs.
Poverty indeed is a big problem not just for individuals but also for society at large.
What is Societal poverty
This is poverty as it concerns society.
A society that fails to harbour all facilities or amenities needed for the comfort of human life is said to be a poverty wrecking society.
When a society whose members regularly travel out in the search of greener pastures is a poor society.
No one can abandon his society in search of wealth if his society can give it to him.
Levels/causes of societal poverty
- Government level
- Individual level
- Parental level
- Environmental level
- Peer group level
Government level
Government as one of the reasons why society is poor will be discussed under the following heading.
- Policies
- Not harnessing opportunities
- Ethnocentrism
- Lack of leadership knowledge
- Pride/lack of emulation
Policies;
Policies the government of a city makes go a long way in alleviating or decreasing the poverty of such an environment.
When a government makes poor policies on poverty alleviation, such a society will soak in abject poverty.
When the reverse is the case, such a society will always boom economically.
A comparison of Nigeria and the United States can be taken into consideration in this regard.
You cannot compare the rate of poverty in the US with that of Nigeria.
I Could remember back in the day when I was a kid, we always had this impression that a Nigerian billionaire cannot financially compete with a security officer in the US.
That sounds funny, right? Well, the truth is that a poor man in the US is richer than a poor man in Nigeria.
The problem is government policies. If the government can make friendly policies that will help the citizens move away from poverty tell me why such a society won’t move away from poverty.
Not harnessing opportunities
A government that fails to make use of opportunities is bad and shouldn’t be allowed to live.
The reason for international relationships is to foster global development.
Situations where the government is not ready or interested in copying the positive works of their counterparts still keep me awake every night.
A responsible government exploits opportunities which will go a long way in saving society from poverty.
Ethnocentrism
Another cause of societal poverty is ethnocentrism.
According to Wikipedia, ethnocentrism means “to apply one’s own culture or ethnicity as a frame of reference to judge other cultures, practices, behaviours, beliefs, and people, instead of using the standards of the particular culture involved”.
Cambridge Dictionary also sees ethnocentrism as “the belief that the people, customs, and traditions of your race or country are better than those of other races or countries”.
An ethnocentric leader of course leads his country into chaos.
A society with vast ethnic groups is bound to have immeasurable conflicts except if it is well managed.
When a leader focuses on development in his ethnic group and neglects other ethnic groups, such a neglected society will experience a high level of poverty because the government does not care about them.
A good example is what is obtainable in Nigeria. At the time in which this article was published, the country was under the leadership of a Fulani man.
Muhammadu Buhari, who was in charge of the government, focused more of his attention on his Fulani brothers.
All their genocidal plots against other ethnicities were fostered by the Buhari-led government.
Despite the high rate of poverty surrounding the people of other ethnic nationalities, the president of the country remained adamant. All his focus was to develop his ethnicity first.
Lack of leadership knowledge
When a government lacks leadership know-how, trust me, such a society will experience an unimaginably high rate of poverty.
Whether such a society is richly blessed with resources that can make it become one of the best countries in the world, as long as its leadership is filled with failures, such a society will remain one of the poorest in the world.
A good example again is Nigeria. Nigeria is an African country richly blessed with all kinds of mineral resources.
Adding to these resources, the country has vast lands and of course, it is the most populous and largest black nation in the world.
Irrespective of this natural endowment, the country is still bearing the title of “poverty headquarter of the world”.
Despite the rich resources the country has, citizens of the country are still living under $1 a day.
A society can be ridden with poverty irrespective of its riches in mineral resources if it has leadership that lacks governmental knowledge.
Pride/lack of emulation also causes societal poverty
One of the causes of societal poverty is the government’s pride or lack of interest to emulate others.
A leader who is not interested to learn from his colleagues in the business of leadership will lead his country to poverty.
Let’s say, for example, Joe Biden, the president of the United States of America, refuses to copy some of the good managerial policies put in place by the Nigerian government because Nigeria is regarded as a third-world country.
Maybe, he is doing this simply because he thinks that his country is greater than Nigeria and so can’t copy ideas from them.
A country that is not ready to learn from others’ ideas can never grow.
Individual factor
At the individual level, we shall be discussing some of those personality traits that have contributed to societal poverty.
For a quick understanding, the following shall be discussed under this subheading.
- Lack of interest to hustle
- Spending senselessly
- Not ready to learn
- Extraordinarily lazy
- Believes that he knows it all
- Lack of self-confidence
- Lack of perseverance
- Current job
- Illiteracy
- Government dependency
Lack of interest to hustle
Every person who desires to succeed in life must hustle.
Without hustling, no one can have anything to eat. To escape poverty you must learn to hustle.
One of the causes of societal poverty is individuals’ lack of interest in hustling.
When you don’t hustle, don’t expect any form of breakthrough.
Spending senselessly
Spending money carelessly is also one of the factors responsible for a society’s poverty.
When you don’t keep track of how you spend your money, gradually you are inviting poverty.
I was a victim of this obnoxious behaviour some time ago. I once had $250 as my savings. When and how I squandered the money was something I do not know of.
The money was spent so foolishly that I nearly committed suicide.
The reason was that I didn’t have any other way possible to recover or replace the money that I was spending recklessly.
Not ready to learn
Nothing destroys a society or an individual if not the inability to learn new ideas.
Poverty is enhanced by the inability to learn new ideas.
When you see that something you are doing is not working, all that is expected of you is to learn new and workable ideas.
Concentrating on an outdated style of doing things will leave you where you are. But when you learn new ideas there is a 100% chance that you will pull out of poverty.
Societies or individuals that wish to escape poverty must learn and put into practice new ways of doing things.
Extraordinarily lazy
A lazy person is, of course, a friend of poverty. He has a good bond with poverty.
When you are lazy to work it means that you are not lazy to be associated with poverty.
Believes that he knows it all
It is wrong to believe that you are an encyclopedia of knowledge and as such, you can’t learn from people.
No one person knows everything. Learn to subject yourself to a learning process. Also, no matter the age or gender of your teacher, learn to humble yourself.
Poverty is and can never be a good friend to anyone. You must learn to unlearn to relearn new and trending ideas.
Lack of self-confidence
Another factor that has contributed to societal poverty is an individual’s lack of self-confidence.
When you feel that you can’t make it, there is no tendency that you will make it. Except where you believe that you can make it no matter the situation then you are bound to succeed.
Lack of self-confidence promotes poverty. Learn to believe in yourself.
Lack of perseverance
Perseverance is the virtue of persisting in the attainment of a goal.
When you stop doing things simply because you feel that they are difficult to achieve, you will fail.
No matter how difficult something appears to be, learn to persist, trust me you will get there.
It takes a man with a lionheart to achieve greater things.
No one can make money without getting ready to pass through the rigorous processes involved.
Making money is not easy so you must learn to put in all the effort needed to succeed.
Current job
Another thing that could contribute to poverty is the kind of job you are doing.
Instead of depending on or wasting your time in jobs that offer you not more than ten dollars ($10) a month, why not go out there and look for a better job?
The bitter truth is that that job is contributing to your poverty. Go out there and find a new job.
Illiteracy
Seeing opportunities and lacking the knowledge of identifying them is another aspect of poverty the society is suffering from.
When you don’t recognize opportunities, it amounts to big problems.
Government dependency as one of the causes of societal poverty
Depending on the government to provide jobs for you is another problem or factor that leads to societal poverty.
These days, in some countries like Nigeria, Ghana, etc, nobody waits for the government again to provide jobs for them.
The more you wait for the government to provide jobs for you the more you embrace poverty.
These days no government is trustworthy as long as it concerns the alleviation of citizens from poverty.
Don’t depend on the government. Go and get self-employed.
Parental level as a cause of societal poverty
Under this subheading, we shall be looking at the parental contribution to society’s poverty.
This can be observed from the parental lack of plans for the family.
Parents who lack plans for the family will lead the family to abject poverty.
Parents must put into practice all that is needed to ensure that poverty is eradicated from the family.
When families are free from poverty, society is free as well.
Environmental level
Another contributor to an individual’s poverty is the environment he or she belongs to.
When the environment doesn’t favour a particular kind of business such a society is bound to face poverty in that area of the business it doesn’t favour.
Also, when an individual grows up in an environment that doesn’t encourage him to work hard, such a child will never know what hustling is like.
The environment of a person contributes to how he views poverty and much more.
Peer group level
The peer group also supports in some ways the factors enhancing poverty in a society.
A person who makes friends with people who don’t encourage him to hustle, such a person definitely will not know what it takes to become successful.
That is why the Holy Book said that “iron sharpens iron”.
When you mix up with friends who are not happy with poverty, trust me, you will never be happy with poverty also.
Wrapping things up on the causes of societal poverty
Poverty is a man-made situation that can only be corrected by man.
Nobody is born to be poor or become a good friend to poverty.
Irrespective of the fact that the government, individuals, families, friends, and environment contribute to a society’s poverty, people should learn to find their ways out of poverty.
Hope this was helpful. Feel free to leave your contributions.
